


Trust

by verycoolperson, Vrunka



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gore, M/M, wound fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 03:15:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11728347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verycoolperson/pseuds/verycoolperson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Daud is almost twenty the first time he tastes his own death. The ship he is on pitches, rolls in the angry sea, capsizes. The storm swallows him. The sea swallows him. The sky. The Void.





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> So we know that Daud travelled the isles looking for Shrines right? And that the Outsider's whispers at one point made him feel special. A take on maybe why.
> 
> Have I mentioned I freaking love Whynot?? Her young Daud got me sweaaaaaatin'

Daud is almost twenty the first time he tastes his own death. The ship he is on pitches, rolls in the angry sea, capsizes. The storm swallows him. The sea swallows him. The sky. The Void.

And death tastes like...

Like the Outsider. Salt and brine and infinite endlessness. Lonely and blank and blue and red.

Red?

Daud blinks, hisses at the way his face aches at the motion. He stares up at the sky.

Not dead. Well, it's something.

He moves his arms, they drag heavy and numb across the rocks of the beach. His mark pulses beneath his skin. He presses his palm to the right side of his face, the skin seems to shift and flap, torn. Stinging. Salt crusted at edges of it, bleeding in.

His hand comes away crimson. His side also screams.

The sea gave him back alright, returned him broken to the shore.

Daud begins to sit up. The world swoops as he does, drunken, stumbling. He doesn't even make it the full way before he is falling to the side, vomiting. Meager contents of his stomach, gelatinous and anonymous within the soup of seawater and stomach acid that he expels out onto the rocks.

His arms cannot hold his weight.

He falls into it, collapses.

His eyes close.

The void sings to him as he floats through unconsciousness.

The same notes he hears whenever he visits the Shrines, following their song from isle to isle.

"One is close," the Outsider whispers to him. "Oh Daud, my wolf. Aren't you coming for me?"

Daud opens his eyes.

The rocks and his sickness and the blood have not changed.

And he is still alive.

He swallows.

He sits up.

The world still rocks as he does, but not quite as violently. The small crabs that had been feasting on his vomit scatter with his movement. Their feet and claws crack against the rocks.

Daud stands.

The effort is...monumental. His limbs feel like lead. His side is a numb, worrying expanse. He clenches his marked fist and turns in a circle until the song in his mind is clear and vibrant.

He begins to walk in that direction.

Dragging himself when he falls again. Slick crimson trails left by his passing. His side bleeding sluggishly, leaving his life tracked out over the rocks.

Death.

Never before has he realized how absolutely present it could be. Looming in his mind like the Outsider does. Like a veil or a shadow, murky, breathing.

His mark drives him on. The discordant humming of the whales drives him on. And the Outsider, sitting on his back, encouraging him.

The cave, when he sees it tucked along the shore, seems to glow with the purples and blues of the Void.

Mindless, half-dead, Daud fights to his feet and finds it in himself to run.

Whoever had taken the time to build this shrine, so out of the way, so hidden, had done it poorly. The cave, more of an alcove really, sheltered from the roaring sea by heavy hung fabric, painted in blues and blacks and golds.

Daud grips it for balance as he peers at the wood and metal alter within. The fabric is sailcloth. The paint chips off onto his gloves.

The rune whispers.

Cradled on a pillow that too has seen better days. Many of the ornamental beads that fringe the edge have broken off. Little pieces of glass scattered along the flat rocky ground.

Daud stumbles two steps into the cave. Two more and he will be there. At the alter. With his God. He lifts his foot to take the third step.

He never makes it.

The ground rushes up to meet him.

He never makes that either.

The void opens for him.

The Outsider catches him.

"Daud," he says, as Daud's weight sags into his arms. "Oh you were so close."

In the Void things move weird, too slow, other things go too quickly. Wrong. The skin on his face tingles, the Outsider's lips press against it and it should hurt but it doesn't. Daud groans and when he reaches up to touch, the skin is stitched and knotted.

Scarred.

It's not like he was a looker to begin with; but his fingers linger over the skin. The new bumps and ridges. The eye is unharmed.

Like life, it is something at least.

Gently the Outsider lowers him. Daud cringes at the way he cannot quite hold his own weight.

Blood loss.

The Void seems to eat it as it seeps from him. Seems to absorb it. But it barely hurts.

Barely feels like anything at all.

Death, here in the Void, is not cold like it was on the shore. Creeping still, stalled, but it almost feels welcoming. Daud leans against the Outsider. Daud waits for it.

"You are afraid?" the Outsider says.

Death flickers just outside of Daud's vision. Death looms.

"I guess," Daud says. "I had...so much to do still."

"You came to find me."

"You told me too."

"Good at following orders," the Outsider says with a smile. It makes Daud uncomfortable.

"I guess," Daud says again. And the Outsider kisses him.

Four other times he has found the shrines. Four other times he has collected the rune and glimpsed the Void and the Outsider within it. Only once, the last time, did the Outsider give him this.

The kiss is more like wine than any proper kiss has the right to be. Heady and fizzing. Like alcohol twisting and fogging in Daud's gut and his brain. Igniting places he had hitherto left unexplored. Uninterested.

But isn't that just like the Outsider to make them interesting.

Death takes a shifting, sliding step closer and Daud clings to the Outsider's kisses, fingers on his shoulders, digging into the leather.

The Outsider smiles. All teeth and dark, incomprehensible eyes. He pulls Daud's fingers to his mouth, nips the edge of one to slide the bloodstained leather off.

The mark glows gold and blue and bright in the relatively quiet closeness of the Void. The mark that is Outsider made flesh.

"Do you want to die?" the Outsider asks.

So much to do still. There is still so much to be done.

"No," he says.

"Do you trust me," the Outsider asks. Laying his fingers over each of Daud's, lining them up. His hand is smaller than Daud's own, thinner, more delicate.

Do you trust me.

"I guess," Daud says.

Three times.

The Outsider's smile turns sharper. Edges seem to hone and meld, his teeth are sharper, shark's teeth, shark's eyes. He drags Daud's hand along the planes of Daud's torso. The shirt he had been wearing is in tatters. There a small cuts and abrasions all along his skin. Where the marked hand touches, the wounds shimmer and heal. Warmth and smooth flesh are all that is left of them. Memories. Less than that.

The Outsider leaves Daud's hand at the wound in his side. Gaping. Punctured deep. Whatever gouged him had done a fair job of it. Split through muscle, cleaved cleanly. Missed his ribs, missed his lungs.

Something and something.

The blood and salt rubs off on Daud's fingers. The wound does not heal.

"It's deep," the Outsider says. Calmly, not that Duad had heard him as anything but calm. But still. He could be talking about the ocean. His eyes meet Daud's, glittering and inhuman. "Shall I show you?"

Daud breathes.

Do you trust me.

He's travelled this far, hasn't he? And after all, he doesn't want to die.

"Okay."

The Outsider's fingers rest lightly upon the wound, the trench of it. Sinew and flesh rendered so cleanly. It takes a second for everything to click, for Daud to understand. He feels stupid once he does. But it is too late.

The Outsider's fingers slide into him. Breach him. Push through the muscle with one clean, powerful thrust.

It hurts.

Daud gasps, he cries out. There are tears in the corners of his eyes. He grabs at the Outsider's wrist, pushing at him, instinctually fighting; trying to escape. Those fingers in him burn, they sing to the mark on his hand, call to it.

Delicate and thin, is that what he had thought? Foolish. Utterly asinine.

"Please," he says, "I didn--"

The Outsider kisses him. With teeth this time, on his lips, clashing against his own. Catching. Distracting.

"Put your fingers in, Daud," the Outsider says. Daud's hand against the wound. Mark humming and trilling like something alive.

Put them in.

"I can't."

"You can. You're my wolf. The bane of man. This is but a simple thing."

Duad swallows, he breathes into the Outsider's mouth.

"I can't," he says again.

The Outsider's eyebrows flex. His nose wrinkles. "Do you doubt me, Daud?"

Do you trust me.

Daud licks his lips. The Outsider's fingers move aside for his own, slip free from him, blood-slick and dripping. The warm releasing gush of it against Daud's fingertips makes his stomach turn.

He doesn't think about it.

He pushes them in.

It hurts less than when the Outsider had done it. But it still hurts. Daud grunts, recoils from his own touch. His knees buckle. The Outsider hold him up, guides by the wrist as he presses his fingers deeper within himself.

Blood. The lumps and warm pulses of his own insides. He feels sick.

He feels dizzy.

He starts to pull his fingers out; this isn't working the Outsider's magic is failing him and he needs to stop. He must. Before he makes it worse. 

The Outsider's hand drops to cup his cock and with a start, Daud realizes he is hard. Aching. The pain and the warmth and the Outsider's influence all sliding under his skin.

There is an urgency to it that he has rarely felt before.

Daud makes another noise, curling into the Outsider this time, toward the pleasure, the shifting, demanding spark of it. His hips twitch.

Do you

Trust

Me

Daud closes his eyes. He forces his fingers in deeper. His cock jumps as the Outsider frees it. The air of the Void is cool and dry.

"Daud, my perfect Daud," the Outsider says. His lips trail under Daud's eye, down his jaw. "Just a little further. Can you take them deeper, Daud?"

Daud can. He does. He makes himself. His thumb braces at the edge of his wound. The Outsider's hand strokes over his cock. The movements are as sloppy and uncoordinated as the rare occasions when Daud does this to himself.

The thought is discordant; he can feel it in his muscles, his own hand working over the flesh. But he is still. He is...

The Outsider is here. Real, solid, in front of him.

The Outsider is...

"Daud." His voice wavers, Daud has never heard him sound like that. "Don't think. Listen to me," the Outsider says.

Trust.

Duad does, he curls his fingers, the wound tears further, fresh blood down his side, splashing onto his hip, his cock. He doesn't look down to see if the Outsider's hand is covered now. He cannot stand that it may not be.

As the pain flares, as the Outsider jerks him off faster, as orgasm looms as close as death. Too many things to focus on. The Void reels around them.

And then the pain begins to recede. His side feels hot, too hot, he pulls his fingers out with a hiss, crying out. The Outsider swallows his moans, catches them, vibrating in his throat.

The wound, the killing blow, begins to stitch. To mend. The flesh knits. Comes together. His mark shines with a thousand colors, Daud can feel them in his arm, in his veins. The Outsider's magic.

He shudders. The Outsider strokes his cock twice more. Weakly, Daud comes between them. The wave of orgasm is nothing compared to the warmth of his healing. One sensation is lost under the weight of the other.

The wound closes.

Daud's arm aches. Not his marked one. He leans against the Outsider and he doesn't think about it.

The wound heals.

Daud breathes.

"Are you okay?" the Outsider asks.

"Shouldn't you know?"

The Outsider smiles. He kisses Daud's new scar, the one that twists down his brow and cheek. "You have to go now," the Outsider says.

The Void is still spinning. Careening. Out of control around them. Daud blinks begins to look around until the Outsider's hands on his jaw stop him.

"You have to go," he says again.

"But I--"

The world pitches.

And Daud is back in the cave off the coast of Baleton. Laying in a drying pool of his own blood. He closes his eyes as his stomach heaves from the sudden scene shift. He begins to sit up. His glove is off, his mark glows faintly. He curls his fingers and watches the way the skin stretches.

The wound on his stomach is no more. Just a shadow of white and some flaking blood. He touches his face. The scar is there. The skin is tight and taut like it has been there for years.

Daud stands.

The whalebone rune he had come to collect sits on the pillow that has seen better days.

The rune is cracked, bleeding wisps of darkness and motes of dust rise from the trench of it. It will be useless now, a broken totem.

Daud takes it anyway. Holds it against his chest.

Superstitious.

Trusting.

**Author's Note:**

> Please please please check out our tumblrs!
> 
> @vrunkawrites  
> @bomacian
> 
> We both probably totally want to talk to you!


End file.
